


Safe haven

by killerweasel



Series: Inked [2]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 16:24:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killerweasel/pseuds/killerweasel





	Safe haven

Title: Safe haven  
Fandom: Angel  
Characters: Lindsey McDonald, Marcus Hamilton  
Rating: R  
Word count: 1,548  
A/N: This is AU after _Angel's Dead End_

**Safe haven**

The bed creaked as he began to stir. After making sure the door was locked, the last thing I needed right now was for someone to stick their head in to see how things were going, I crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. I watched his eyelid flutter open. There was fear on his face as he looked around wildly. Then he tried to sit up and quickly discovered that he was restrained. Fear turned to complete panic and I knew if I didn’t do something he was either going to hurt himself or destroy the bed he was on.

“Marcus.” My voice made him go statue still. It wasn’t until I shifted into his line of vision that his body finally began to relax. “You need to calm down. You’re still a mess. If you keep thrashing around, we’re going to have to fix you up all over again and no one wants to do that.”

“McDonald?” His voice was barely above a whisper. “It worked?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Marcus.” I check him over, making sure he hadn’t pulled any of his wounds open again. “You’re at my place in Wyoming. And you have very poor timing because my siblings and their children are here for the week. You appeared out of nowhere by the barn, scaring the crap out of my nieces and nephews with the state you were in. Luckily for you, my sister’s a surgeon and my brother’s a veterinarian. Of course, I had to try to explain what the hell you are before letting them get anywhere near you.”

Stretching my hand out, I grabbed something from the end table. I rolled it over in my palm a few times. “You were dead, Marcus. Hell, I lost track of how many times you died while they were working on saving your ass. But you just kept coming back again. Even if they knocked you out, when you came back, it was like they’d never put anything into your system in the first place. So they finally just worked on you without using anything.”

I went quiet for a few minutes, going over what had happened in my head. Nothing I’d ever witnessed at Wolfram and Hart came anywhere close to the carnage that showed up in my own backyard. “My sister told me last night that she’s having nightmares about what they had to do, that she can still hear your screams when she closes her eyes.” It wasn’t until the second or third death that I ended up using my belt as a gag to muffle the majority of the screams.

He was having trouble staying awake and listening to what I was saying. I watched his eye close a few times during our conversation and knew he was still very weak from his injuries. It made what I was about to do seem downright nasty, but this was the only chance I was going to get. I waited until Marcus’ eye closed again before shifted my body on the bed. Moving quickly, I ended up straddling Marcus’ chest, pinning him against the mattress. I brought up my other hand, still clutching what I’d grabbed earlier in my fingers.

The panic I’d been expecting wasn’t there. I probably would have freaked out if someone was holding a needle in front of my eyeball. Instead, he just held still. “If you don’t tell me the truth, Marcus, I’m going to shove this into your eye. Blink if you understand me.” He blinked a couple of times. “You people were supposed to leave me the hell alone. What the fuck, Marcus?”

Marcus swallowed a couple of times. When he spoke, his voice was calm. “You wouldn’t do something like that, McDonald.”The hand holding the needle began to tremble and I knew he was right. “May I have some water please?”

His question took me by surprise and I almost dropped what I was holding. I stared at him for a moment before sighing. “Yeah.” After tossing the needle back onto the table, I got off of him and walked over to the mini fridge. I grabbed one of the water bottles and came back. “Sorry.”

“I would have done the same thing.” There was an unspoken ‘but I would have followed through on my threat’ which made my skin crawl. I opened the bottle and held it to his lips, making sure to go slow so he wouldn’t be sick. He took a few swallows before slumping back down again. “Thank you. How long have I been here?”

“It’s been three days.” I rubbed my temple. “After they finished patching you up, they kept you unconscious to let your body heal. This is the first time you’ve really been awake since you showed up.” I made myself comfortable on the bed next to him. “I’ll take the restraints off tomorrow, if my sister says your bones have knit enough.”

Marcus gave me a very small smile. “Are you sure you really want to know what’s going on?” I nodded. “The Beast was defeated. Turned out the thing controlling it was trapped in the body of Angel’s secretary. She’s in a coma in one of our medical facilities. They doubt she’s ever going to recover.”

“If the Beast didn’t do this to you, what did? I’ve never seen anyone beaten that badly before, Marcus. They caved your chest in. I could see your heart struggling to beat through the damn hole. And your eye...” I shuddered. “Very few demons or nonhumans are strong enough to do something like that.”

“It was one of the Old Ones.”

My eyebrows shot up. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

Marcus shook his head. “On the plus side, the god king is trapped in a human host so she’s nowhere near as powerful as she should be. Otherwise I really would be dead right now.”

I tried to imagine just how strong something like that could be and failed. Those kinds of beings, higher powers, ranked right up there with the Powers that Be or the Senior Partners, maybe even higher. Something like that could destroy the planet without even breaking a sweat. “Go back a couple of steps here. Which Old One are we talking about and what human host?”

“You wouldn’t know her. She joined Angel’s group after you left Los Angeles. Turned out one of our employees was an Illyria worshiper. Not really sure how he made it through the screening process without any of the psychics picking that up, but it took everyone by surprise, especially the Partners.” He sighed. “We didn’t figure out what was going on until it was too late. The Partners sent me to kill the host before the god king took total control. Angel and his friends weren’t happy with that plan.”

I bet that went over like a lead balloon. If you killed the host, the parasite within would die too. It was Angel’s friend though. There was no way they would have let Marcus do something like that, even if it meant saving the rest of the world. “Let me see if I can figure out what happened. You show up wherever they have her. She’s on the bed dying. Angel and friends attack you to prevent you from hurting their friend. Said friend dies and comes back as something the likes of which our world hasn’t seen in centuries. All hell breaks loose.”

“Pretty much.” He started to drift off and I gave his arm a little squeeze to keep him awake. “She was on me before I could blink. She knew what I was, McDonald. I didn’t stand a chance against her.”

“My name is Lindsey, Marcus. Stop calling me McDonald.” He murmured something I couldn’t make out. “That still doesn’t explain why you came here or how you found me. I thought I was supposed to be untraceable with that ink you shoved into my chest.”

“We’re connected.” Marcus struggled to keep his eye open and failed. “My blood is in the ink. I can find you through it. I had the Partners open a doorway and I crawled through before she could finish me off.”

I shook his shoulder, making him groan softly. “Stay with me for just a little more, Marcus, and then you can rest. Is she going to come looking for you?”

“No. The Partners picked a replacement while I recover. Eve will tell Angel’s friends what must be done.” He went quiet for so long I thought he’d fallen asleep. “Illyria’s host can’t handle that kind of power. She’ll burn out and take half the country with her she goes.”

“Marcus?” No answer, but I didn’t think he was really asleep yet either. “Why would you come to me when you could have ended up anywhere?”

The corners of his mouth turned up. “You were the only one I could think of who would help me even after I tried to kill you.”

I waited a few minutes to see if he was going to say anything else. When he didn’t, I got up from where I was sitting, turned the light off, and left the room.


End file.
